HELL WEEK TURNS TURNS INTO A HELLISH VIEWING EXPERIENCE
★☆☆☆☆ (Kill It with Fire)
Director: Paul Ziller
1990
Those who directed and wrote Pledge Night want you to know that fraternities are torture chambers where young pledges could be forced to eat excrement by their future “brothers” at any given moment. The first, kill-free forty minutes are scene after scene of a hazing ritual the writer heard about somewhere and wants to show you in meticulous detail—it’s the movie version of mansplaining. Most of Pledge Night is nothing but information for people who wonder what happens beyond frat house doors, and none of it is interesting or funny. It’s Revenge of the Nerds meets Hostel, and believe me, it’s not as good as that sounds. This film full of errors and plot holes isn’t scary, but the idea that your teenage son would let a supposed friend force worms down his throat so he can join a fraternity is downright terrifying.
The movie opens with a young man getting tied to a tree and having eggs thrown on him by college students, and I could not tell you who this person was. Most of the male characters in this movie look alike, with one exception; as one potential frat brother is happy to point out to his disapproving mother, “We have a Black guy and a Jew!” Pledge Night keeps raising the bar of tastelessness without any of the humor that is required to dilute it. Something gross happens, next scene. Something gross happens, next scene. The older members throw a “Pig Party”, a contest where the brother who bangs the ugliest broad wins. Then morning arrives, as does another hazing ritual. Nothing is learned, nothing moves the story forward. The cast is a bevy of bad actors who probably worked for beer and pizza.
Our protagonist is Larry Bonner, a college student who is the nice guy of the class pledging Phi-Epsilon (what a coincidence, the assholes at my old university were Sigma Phi Epsilon). Of course, the group consists of stock vintage characters: the hot head, the coward, and the Black man; and they, along with a few others, put up with a demeaning experience that makes you question their sanity. During hell week, when they sleep on cots in the frat house basement before becoming full members, they are treated like servants, drowned in toilets, paddled, branded with a hot iron, and forced to eat raw eggs, bugs, and cherries that were in each other’s buttholes. If Pledge Night makes you feel anything, it might be nausea. The filmmakers began to realize the audience might not buy anyone putting up with this brutality, so they throw this tidbit of information out there, twice: “65% of Congressmen are fraternity brothers.” They use the Keeping Up with the Joneses Virus from the 80s and 90s to explain why these young men are so power hungry, so desperate to be successful. Our plot revolves around these little social climbers and their impending membership, and then-
When Pledge Night has about ten minutes left, it goes from 0 to 80 thanks to the appearance of Sid, a zombie or ghost who has returned to maim and kill. Early on, we’re given hints to his existence thanks to Larry’s mother’s warnings. The unhappy woman tried to convince her son not to join the frat by telling him the story of Sid, a student who was killed in the fraternity’s house in the late 60s. I’m not sure what Sid is because he can hide in toilets and vanish, but he does seem to be back for some kind of revenge, giving us plenty of goofy laughs. The last few minutes of the film has our Greek geeks not knowing how to run for help as Sid finds creative ways to dispatch them one at a time. Half of the kills are disappointingly off screen (a guy had a cherry bomb stuck you-know-where) while others show off the budget through fabulous body horror.
This inconsistency is baked into the film. Pledge Night takes place during that great time when the pastel 80s still ran amuck, but the soundtrack by Anthrax is rippin’ and roarin’ and belongs somewhere else. Larry’s mother never told him that Sid was her old boyfriend, but he tells his future brothers his mother said Sid was her old boyfriend. I counted three mistakes in the script. Pledge Night probably has the greatest line ever given by a murderer after he kills his victim (“That’s for Spiro Agnew.”), but by the time you get to the rabid hippie zombie, it’s just too late. I like bad movies, not boring ones. Ten minutes of brain-dead awesomeness is not enough of a reason to put yourself through this kind of torture.
GENRES: Diverse Characters, Funny, Monster/Creature, Teens in Peril
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